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ACC QUESTION of WEEK : Who was single-season ACC football team of the past decade?
I was asked by the publishers of All Sports Discussion to provide my answer on the best single-season ACC football team of hte past decade.
Strong, credible arguments can be made for three different national championship teams: 2013 Florida State, 2016 Clemson, and 2018 Clemson. Of those three, the Clemson teams are better. This is not a negative commentary on 2013 Florida State.
As I always say when discussing the Heisman Trophy, determining the very best player in college football, compared to the second- and third-best players, requires finding points of differentiation. These distinctions don’t reflect negatively on the third-best player. Being the third-best player in the United States is incredibly good. One merely identifies two other players as being better.
That’s what this is about.
2013 Florida State is an all-time-great team… but not as great as the Clemson teams. 2013 Florida State fell behind Auburn, 21-3, and needed a fake punt to turn around that national championship game. 2013 Auburn was a very fine team, but those Tigers needed miraculous plays to beat Georgia and Alabama to make the SEC and then national championship games that season. Falling behind that Auburn team by 18 points is hard to ignore.
If one is to compare 2016 and 2018 Clemson, then, many will say 2018 given how well the Tigers throttled Tua Tagovailoa and the Crimson Tide’s offense in the second half in Santa Clara, California. It’s a valid, sound, responsible argument.
Yet, when comparing Clemson’s two national championship game wins over Alabama, the 2016 win was more impressive. More precisely, the 2016 Alabama team was a lot better than the 2018 Alabama team. The 2018 Crimson Tide possessed a relatively weak defense with a not-very-good defensive coordinator, Tosh Lupoi. The 2016 Tide had Jeremy Pruitt as defensive coordinator, and that Alabama squad had better defensive players up and down the roster.
Yes, the 2018 Bama offense was better than the 2016 Bama offense by a considerable margin, but even with Jalen Hurts’ limitations as a passer in 2016, Alabama could still run the ball. The Tide were very physical, whereas the 2018 team was exposed for its softness by Clemson in California.
The 2016 Clemson team had to prove it could cross the threshold and win the national title under Dabo Swinney. There was enormous pressure on the 2016 team to finish the job, a level of pressure the 2018 never experienced. Deshaun Watson leading Clemson downfield for a winning score in the final seconds was every bit as majestic and magnificent as Vince Young doing the same for Texas against USC 11 years earlier in the Rose Bowl.
The 2016 Clemson team had to overcome more than the 2018 team, and it had to beat a better version of Alabama in the title game. Even though 2018 Clemson blew out Nick Saban and 2016 Clemson barely escaped the Tide, the 2016 team gets the nod.
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